At long last, the Chicago City Council has become good theater once again: real passion, serious debate, even a little mystery about how things will turn out.
From the recent squabbles over honorary street signs, smoking in restaurants and the horrors of foie gras, to Wednesday's grand wrangle over the so-called big-box ordinance, aldermanic gatherings are worth watching for the first time since the late 1980s.
So let us watch, already.
Local legislative bodies everywhere show their meetings on cable TV or the Internet.
Organized opponents are afraid of Chicago's so-called "big box" ordinance, and for good reason:
They
are warning that if the City Council passes and Mayor Richard Daley
signs a new wage and benefits law requiring stores larger than 90,000
square feet to pay their employees at least $10 an hour and $3 in
benefits by July 2010, retail giants such as Target and Wal-Mart will
flee the city, particularly the underdeveloped communities they are
considering. now eyeing.
Jobs and shoppers will head to the suburbs,
according to a talking-points memo from the Illinois Retail Merchants
Association, costing the city tens of millions of dollars a year in
property and sales tax revenue, and denying our poorest and least
mobile residents easy access to employment and bargains.
Perversely,
they warn, a proposal to help the less advantaged will end up harming
them as well, along with the big bad merchandisers who supposedly
exploit them.
But that's not what they're really afraid of.
What they're really afraid of is that their dire predictions won't come true.
Where’s my "appalling"? My "unconscionable"? My "malignant"? My "degrading
and offensive"?
For $6 million, I expected a far more vigorous use of the thesaurus than I
heard during news conference Wednesday morning at which special prosecutors
presented the results (.pdf) of a four-year investigation into allegations that Chicago
police tortured suspects from the mid 1970s to the early 1990s.
Instead, the most memorable fragment of rhetoric from the event was chief
deputy special state’s attorney Robert Boyle’s declaration, "We reflect in the
report on what we believe was a bit of a slippage in the (Cook County) State’s
Attorney’s Office at the time of the (Andrew) Wilson case."
Wilson killed two police officers in 1982 and was sadistically worked over
during interrogations by an Area 2 police crew led by the now infamous Cmdr. Jon
Burge. That beating ultimately proved a window into numerous others incidents,
but information about it was brushed off at the time by then States Atty. and
now Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley.
Yates trial in Texas brings old Illinois case back to life
The numbingly sad re-trial of Andrea Yates is coming to a close in Texas this week, providing an opportunity to check in again on a similarly sad story out of Illinois.
Granted, chaos and frustration beat tragedy and grief any day.
It was a spot of luck and a huge relief that no one was killed in Tuesday's subway derailment and fire. So it may strike an ungrateful note to point out that, while it all could have gone so much worse, it also could have gone a whole lot better.
It may be that only two people in the entire world care--my neighbor Rich and his Notre Dame Law School friend Dave. But they really care.
For the last three years, the downtown attorneys have been engaged in a contest--it grew into a quest bordering on an obsession--to see every Chicago taxi numbered 1 through 100.
Each man has seen 98 of the cabs on the roster. Dave has yet to see cab No. 72. Rich has yet to see No. 96. And neither has seen cab No. 80.
"By now, we're wondering if it even exists," Rich said to me at our block party Saturday evening, shortly after his wife (who finds it wholly ridiculous) prompted him to tell the story.
To leave comments and vote on today's column, click here.
By dawn's early light -- literally! -- Chicago Park District cleanup crews were out with a garbage truck Wednesday hauling away evidence of the massive, illegal fireworks party that turns every July 4 in our neighborhood park into a war zone -- figuratively!
My bid for international fame and immortality started with a cranky e-mail from Lawrence B. of Ukrainian Village:
"Who the hell is programming the stupid `Severe Weather Warning' scrolls that are constantly destroying my favorite television programs?!?" he wrote. "OK, I get it. It's going to rain outside. And it's going to rain hard....But, guess what? That's why I'm inside watching TV!!!"
This smug, trite pseudo zinger was funny and fresh briefly after it hit the big-time on "Saturday Night Live" 20 years ago. In a sketch (script), actor William Shatner used the words as he exploded in baffled frustration at the obsessed fans of his former TV show, "Star Trek."
"Get a life!"--translation, "Go devote your energies to something real and productive!" -- may well be useful advice to science fiction cultists, but very few of us are entitled to dispense it with scorn, given the way we spend our leisure time.
As for Lawrence B., all he did was spend a few minutes dashing off a letter to a newspaper columnist in frustration.
Telling him to "get a life" reveals such a paucity of wit, lack of imagination and inability to offer a reasoned response that I was moved, on the spot, to announce a new rule of engagement: " In any debate, the first person to hurl the insult, `get a life!' is the loser."
Attorney Mike Godwin (pictured, left), now a research fellow at Yale University, is famous in Internet circles for a similar decree -- called Godwin's Law -- which says that, in any debate, the first person to make a Nazi analogy is the loser.
The law is actually a folk-process extrapolation of Godwin's observation in the early 1990s that every online debate, if it goes on long enough, eventually devolves into one person comparing his opponents to Hitler. Tradition now has it that, unless the subject is Word War II, such a comparison signals that rational conversation is over and its time for everyone to move on.
Godwin's name will live as long as wild-eyed churls harangue one another online.
So, trying to grab me a little of that fame, I went right to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, and created a very official looking entry for "Zorn's Law."
And as you can see, if you squint, the arbiters at Wikipedia were not pleased at my attempt at self-promotion.
To me, the words "mail fraud" conjure the image of an angry consumer writing a letter addressed to the P.O. box of a novelty company based in a distant state:
Dear Sirs, I wish to complain in the strongest terms about the poor quality of these so-called "X-ray spectacles" I ordered from your catalog. To say that they do not perform as advertised is a grotesque understatement, and ....
But to a federal prosecutor, the words "mail fraud" conjure the image of a huge and tightly woven butterfly net, among other useful tools.
The federal mail-fraud statutes are "our Stradivarius, our Colt .45, our Louisville Slugger, our Cuisinart—and our true love," wrote former Assistant U.S. Atty. Jed S. Rakoff, now a federal judge in New York City.
"We may flirt with [other laws] and call the conspiracy law `darling,’ but we always come home to the virtues of [mail fraud], with its simplicity, adaptability and comfortable familiarity," Rakoff wrote. "It understands us and, like many a foolish spouse, we like to think we understand it."
There's an old saying among trial lawyers that if you don't have the facts on your side, argue the law; and if you don't have the law on your side, argue the facts.
If you have neither the facts nor the law on your side? Conventional wisdom varies. I found many suggestions in the news archives, including "blow smoke," "holler," "pound the table," "distract," "confuse the issue," "call your opponent names" and "attack the accuser."
Defense attorney Thomas A. Durkin's remarkable two-hour closing argument Monday at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse on behalf of Mayor Richard Daley's former patronage chief employed so many of these tactics and danced so nimbly around the core issue raised in the prosecution's closing argument that I left the courtroom feeling certain: He's got nothing.
Candidate's reform talk may be adding insult to injury
You'd think that Republican U.S. congressional candidate Peter Roskam would have the common sense to keep his yap shut about the issue of lawsuit reform.
Roskam, a state senator from Wheaton who is running for the west suburban 6th District seat being vacated by retiring GOP lion Henry Hyde of Bensenville, sent out a news release this week boasting that "more than two dozen doctors joined [him Monday] in a door-to-door effort in support of his position on lawsuit reform. ... Roskam has named lawsuit reform as a top priority."
Trial attorneys as bogeymen is a solid, familiar, business-friendly, conservative position, for sure.
Republicans frequently invoke the scary image of predatory lawyers who take out full-page "We get results!" ads in the Yellow Pages; lawyers who beckon victims of "slip and fall injuries, medical negligence ... dog-bite injuries, wrongful death [and] defective products" to "put our experience to work for you. ... No fee unless you collect."
As arsons go, they don't get much smaller than the tiny fire police say was deliberately set last week at the John Merlo branch of the Chicago Public Library.
Staffers detected the fire quickly and used an extinguisher to put it out before anyone was hurt. The library remained open, and if you visit there today, the only reminders of the incident are gaps on several shelves where destroyed books used to sit.
But the location makes it a bigger event. For both symbolic and safety reasons, the idea of arson in the stacks, no matter how relatively unsuccessful, is chilling. Public libraries are not only embodiments of liberty but, with all that paper, prospective tinderboxes.
More chilling still to many is that the unknown arsonist chose to set the fire in the heart of the Chicago area's largest unified collection of gay and lesbian-oriented books in a public library.
Time to choose: Are you a Phil person or a Tiger person?
"But I don't follow professional golf," you say. "It's of little
interest to me which millionaire can best knock a little ball around a
glorified pasture with a fancy stick, even these next four days during
the U.S. Open Championship."
No matter.
"Phil or Tiger?" has
become a question that transcends sports.
"Phil or Tiger?" is a
cultural question about who you are--your sympathies, your values, your
character.
It's the new "Ginger or Mary Ann?" "Paul or John?" "McEnroe
or Connors?" "Superman or Batman?" test for our times.
(To leave comments on spelling bees, click here; to leave comments on gimme putts, click here.)
"I couldn't believe it," Katharine Close told reporters Thursday,
shortly after she won the Scripps National Spelling Bee on "ursprache."
"I knew how to spell the word."
I couldn't believe it either, in part because the word was so comparatively easy.
After competitors had been knocked out on such preposterously exotic
words as collyrium, syringadenous and icteritious during the first-ever
prime-time broadcast network airing of the final rounds. And after
others had advanced by acing such words as croquignole and
dasyphyllous...
Ursprache, a spelled-like-it-sounds noun of German origin, was a breakaway lay-up. A 12-inch putt. An underhand pitch.
In the world's greatest deliberative body, no one is listening....Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), in his upcoming book, "The Audacity of Hope."
Obama may or may not like it. He may or may not be prepared for it. He may or may not even realize it. But now is his moment.
If he's ever going to run for president, 2008 is his year.
I explained the major reasons why a year and a half ago --they include a weak field of Democratic contenders led by the polarizing Sen. Hillary Clinton, the opportunity to run against a non-incumbent Republican, the muddying effect that years in the U.S. Senate have on politicians and the likelihood that, by the next cycle, someone else will be the darling of celebrities and pundits.
Some accused me at the time and will accuse me today of being unduly and uncritically dazzled by Obama; of cheering him on from the sidelines. But that isn't it.
A while back (see below) you may remember that I declared the delicious 14-week gap between Memorial Day and Labor Day the "Mini Year"--a bit longer and a bit earlier on the calendar than official summer.
And I proposed to start a tradition of using this thoroughly manageable stretch of time to make mini-resolutions or pursue mini-goals:
Pick a weakness and see if you can conquer it--not forever, as in those daunting New Year's resolutions--but only until the first Tuesday after the first Monday in September.
Choose a modest goal or two and set the deadline a mere 98 days from Memorial Day.
We're steaming into summer, official houseguest season, a time when we're summoned to explain and brag about where we live. How do you show off Chicago to your visitors? I trust you don't make them golf the entire time.
Here's my favorite two-day whirlwind Chicago tour:
I didn't see your name on the list of notable plaintiffs who joined the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois when it filed suit Monday against AT&T.
Our pal Studs Terkel, Dr. Quentin Young and several others with considerable progressive bona fides are alleging that the phone giant invaded their privacy and the privacy of all customers in the state by providing phone-call records to the National Security Agency without a court order.
They just repainted the Lincoln Park crosswalk where a hit-and-run driver killed Maya Hirsch on Saturday. I hope someone finds some small consolation in that freshly painted memorial to a 4-year-old girl lost so pointlessly on a spring afternoon.
But it will take a lot more than paint to change Chicago's crosswalk culture, something I've been ranting about for years.
Be honest: Did you know that pedestrians have the right of way in a crosswalk, even if there's not a stop sign or a signal?
I'm
glad Chicago finally has a WNBA franchise--the women's pro basketball
team opened its first season over the weekend--and I hope to take the
whole family to a game soon.
Does it matter to me that if the
Chicago Sky entered the state boys Class AA high school hoops
tournament they wouldn't advance past the regionals? Not at all.
Women's sports have their own yardsticks, their own drama, their own
amazing stars. And it was 33 years ago when tennis great Billie Jean
King thrashed ex-Wimbledon champion Bobby Riggs and showed the last
remaining doubters that top female athletes are formidably talented.
Ald. Todd Stroger (8th) does not have the resume or the political experience to jump to the head of the line of those hoping to replace his ailing dad, John Stroger, as president of the Cook County Board.
The son, 43, was a lackluster state representative who was appointed to his Chicago aldermanic seat and would certainly be otherwise employed if the father were not one of the state's most powerful politicians.
Why, the very idea of Todd Stroger more or less inheriting John Stroger's place on the November ballot in light of the serious stroke John Stroger suffered in early March, is ... is ...
Over at Julie's Health Club, my colleague Julie Deardorff has been trolling for cures for insomnia.
She's been experiencing that late-night "panicky feeling and a brain that won't shut off," and her readers have been helpful.
In the comments area they've suggested prescription drugs, prayer, meditation, herbs, bubble baths, accupressure and special sleepytime teas. They have told her to chew her food better, make sure all the lights are off and the thermostat is down, and exercise late in the day. The have urged her to limit or give up sugar, caffeine and big meals late in the day.
All a lot of bother if you ask me.
A few years ago, by accident, I found a powerful cure for garden-variety insomnia. Now, I can drink coffee until 11 p.m. and drop off to sleep before midnight without any problem.
No matter how crazy or stressful life seems, no matter how worried I am about work or family matters, I'm in the arms of Morpheus within 15 minutes of my head hitting the pillow.
Still not sure? Watch the music video of "Pay Me My Money Down":
It took exactly 26 seconds for Bruce Springsteen to replace my dread with pure exhilaration.
The rock superstar just released "We Shall Overcome - The Seeger Sessions," a CD billed as a tribute to folk icon Pete Seeger.
As a Seeger fan nearly all my life, I could easily imagine the ways such a project could go wrong: With self-indulgent and self-referential re-interpretations; with electronic instrumentation to modernize the sound; with sappy, sterile, scholarly renditions.
Will gay marriage `wild card' change the fall election game?
Buoyed by signs of deep trouble among their foes, members of Chicago's Gay Liberation Network held a little party in a North Side bar last Thursday night.
"Join us as we celebrate the failure of far-right forces in Illinois to get an anti-gay referendum on the November ballot," said the invitation.
Today's print column deals both with telephone tracing technology and the issue of the jury forewoman vs. the coffee-stand owner that I began exploring yesterday. Comments on this column should be posted to the thread here.
A standard scene in old crime dramas would show the stoic but anguished
mother, a detective at her shoulder, trying to keep the kidnapper on
the phone with small talk. Meanwhile, in cutaways investigators beetled
through industrial catacombs, following wires and plugs and hoping to
trace the call before the evildoer hung up.
Most of us know that this sort of frenzy went out with party line. With
caller ID, we can see the incoming number before we even answer. No
need for "So I should place the ransom on the bench or under the bench?"
But I, for one, did not know that police can trace incoming calls up to
at least two years later; that massive phone company data banks must by
law retain digital records of every call you make and receive--just in
case.
I, for one, was surprised at how easily federal officials were able to
track down "Dennis," the man who called a WLS-AM talk show to relay the
not-very-revealing contents of a conversation he said he'd had with a
female juror who was then on the panel deliberating the fate of former
Gov. George Ryan and his associate Larry Warner.
Ryan verdict should be death knell for "pay to keep playing" politics
In his remarks just after Monday's guilty verdict
against former Gov. George Ryan, prosecutor Patrick Collins delivered a
stern warning to politicians.
"Public officials have a duty of
honest services; that is, to serve the people and not their private
interests," he said. "Anybody who hears this, if they want to serve
their private interest, they ought to go get a job in the private
sector."
But Dave Brann, one of the regular perceptive
commentators here at Change of Subject, had a
swift counterpoint.
(Today's column is an expanded take on this blog entry from yesterday)
At last, a good reason not to order sushi!
The whole raw fish-seaweed-vinegar thing has never done much for me, not since my first visit to a sushi restaurant in the early 1980s. And I’ve long felt bad about it –- unadventurous, dull, relentlessly occidental.
I was always the guy who, when dragged to a sushi place, ordered tempura –- batter-dipped, fried seafood and vegetables; onion rings with a college education.
Then came Wednesday’s special report in the Tribune, “Sushi and Rev. Moon -- How Americans’ growing appetite for sushi is helping to support his controversial church," giving me an instant makeover from finicky to high-minded.
What are we talking, here? Possible probation? A few months? A few years? More?
If convicted on some or all of the 18 counts against him, what kind of sentence is 72-year-old former Gov. George Ryan facing?
An idle question for idle hours as the jury in Ryan’s federal corruption trial continues to deliberate I thought I’d simply cross reference the criminal charges with the recommended sentences for those charges and, with a little expert advice, offer a ballpark estimate for your consideration:
If only it were St. Johannes Pizzeria perched in the southwest corner of O'Hare International Airport standing in the way of a $15 billion expansion plan, and not St. Johannes Cemetery.
Late last week, You’ve Got Too Much Club was dangling his legs in the pool, nursing a drink and talking investment strategies with Don’t Stand So Close to the Ball.
Over on the shuffleboard court, Slow Down Your Backswing had a narrow edge in a low-stakes match against Whatever You Do, Don’t Leave This Putt Short.
And, baking inertly in a lounge chair, Water! Oh Lord! Not Water! had his iPod headphones turned way up to drown out the sepulchral taunts, “You’ll get skin cancer,” from No Guts, No Glory, who prefers to read spy thrillers all day under a patio umbrella.
We have heard many times about the "148 pages of jury
instructions" given (and now re-given) to federal jurors deliberating
the fate of former Gov. George Ryan and his co-defendant, Larry Warner.
Wow. Sounds mind numbing. The way some broadcasters land on the words
"148 pages" you would think they were describing an untranslated
version of "Beowulf" rendered in microscopic type.
But of those
148 pages, a dozen are title pages of one sort or another, one is
completely blank and several contain just a single clipped sentence.
All told, the instructions run about 10,000 words--40 double-spaced
pages if they were a term paper.
And if anything, they are too short, not too long.
I had the same questions many of you did when the news broke last week
that the Tribune had found previously undisclosed criminal charges or
convictions in the backgrounds of two jurors deliberating the fate of
former Gov. George Ryan:
If our reporters were planning to do criminal background checks on the
jurors, why didn't they do so earlier--say, six months ago as the trial
was starting? Were we just acting as a conduit for information leaked
by prosecutors or defense attorneys in a last-minute effort to sabotage
the trial?
After a messy campaign, a tidy, if tentative, wrap-up
(column published March 23, 2006
)
Just when you thought it couldn't get any weirder....
After a stroke sidelined Cook County Board President John Stroger one
week before Election Day, effectively halting challenger Forrest
Claypool's attack campaign and prompting an outpouring of preposterous
assurances that the seriously ailing septuagenarian would return to his
office ...
After untold thousands of us got phone calls from
former President Bill Clinton (his recorded voice, actually) offering
his pro-Stroger analysis of our county government ...
After
Claypool's political consultant David Axelrod went on TV about 12:30
a.m. Wednesday to decry as a "terrible shame" the mysterious handling
of the ballots, to worry about "questions that may never be answered"
and to assure viewers of a Claypool victory ...
After Rep.
Bobby Rush, a Stroger backer, followed Axelrod to the cameras to blast
the vote-counting process as "a joke, a travesty, or maybe something
worse," and to invoke allegations of African-American
disenfranchisement in Florida and Ohio in recent years ...
This election should be all over by Sunday, some experts say.
A wrap. A done deal. Put away those posters and start making holiday plans.
It should be, they say, because we should hold elections on weekends, not Tuesdays.
"Other factors being equal, weekend voting increases turnout in the most important national elections," said political scientist Arend Lijphart at the University of California, San Diego, an expert to whom the non-partisan Center for Voting and Democracy in Washington referred the question when I asked it in November of 2000. "I would be in favor of moving elections to a weekend day."
Why not vote on a day of diminished business activity when it's easiest to get to the polls?
Our concerns and sympathies for hospitalized Cook County Board
President John Stroger shouldn't stop us from remembering that his
health crisis has not changed the stakes in next Tuesday's Democratic
primary election:
Here are the top three reasons why former Gov. George Ryan will be
convicted on at least some of the 18 counts against him now being
considered by a federal jury:
The politically connected law firm that's donating more than $10
million in legal services to defend former Gov. George Ryan got its
money's worth Wednesday.
Defense attorney Dan Webb was brilliant in closing arguments as he took
a verbal wrecking ball to the charges against Ryan in the corruption
trial coming to a close this week in the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse.
In seven hours over two days, Webb went through
each allegation against Ryan and was alternately folksy, emphatic,
sarcastic, indignant and funny in explaining why they're "garbage," in
his words, and why the jurors should find Ryan not guilty on all counts.
You should see the Ryan trial as it reaches its climax this week.
Courtroom 2119 in the Dirksen Federal Building, where the last, dramatic stages of the corruption trial of former Gov. George Ryan and his friend are now unfolding, is a windowless, woody box, roughly 45 feet across and 60 feet from the entrance doors to the rear wall--a bit narrower and a few yards deeper than an NBA half court.
I describe it for you here to aid your mind's eye, which will be envisioning it many times this week. Courtroom artists will show you the faces and gestures of the main players.
But since cameras are banned and most of you have never visited a courtroom in the Dirksen building, you'll be imagining the rest by superimposing the action into a courtroom you've visited or seen in a movie. Maybe it will be one of those dramatically ornate, marbled legal theaters at the Cook County Criminal Courts building, or one of those small, sterile legal venues as found in suburbia, or one of those rural hothouses with ceiling fans and sweaty, murmuring citizens in the gallery as seen in "To Kill a Mockingbird."
I tell you who deserves to have a street named in his honor: Ald. Tom Allen (38th), the brave politician trying to put a stop to honorary street names.
(See related story here; vote yay or nay on Allen's proposal here; continue reading this column below)
Skating had little to do with Davis' improved stature; Blago's mea cluelessa has a phony ring
Today's column (below) explores two topics.
First, the redemption of Shani Davis' reputation as a sportsman, which of course some say he didn't need (read --and join -- the heartfelt back and forth here in comments).
Second, the attempted rehabilitation of Gov. Rod Blagojevich's reputation as a comedian. (The latest installment of the Zorn/Rehab dialogue on the cartoon controversy is here)
If I were just slightly less of a gentleman, I would have spit out my
coffee in a great geyser the other morning upon reading the news that
the doorman at George Ryan's Chicago condominium building had testified
as a character witness at the former governor's federal corruption
trial.
The doorman told jurors that Ryan is "a man of integrity, trust and
loyal to his constituents." How does he know? From seeing him about 15
times a month since 1991 and spending a night in the governor's mansion
during the Illinois State Fair.
Nothing against doormen, but that's java-spewing absurd.
The Tribune has decided against publishing reproductions of the cartoons that have touched off deadly rioting in Europe and Asia, but I'm reproducing here the Danish flag in solidarity with the first paper that did.
Denmark's largest daily, Jyllands-Posten, printed the cartoons that lampooned Islamic extremists by using caricatures of the prophet Muhammad-images that have enraged many Muslims, particularly fundamentalists.
At least a dozen people have died in the recent violent protests, Denmark's embassies have come under attack and Islamic leaders have called for a boycott of Danish goods.
Protesters have carried such signs as "Massacre those who insult Islam" and demanded the beheading of those responsible for publication.
The opinion of the Tribune's editorial page is that the cartoons were "juvenile" and "cheesy," a judgment I don't share after going online to see them for myself.
Erma Tranter didn’t sound happy Monday afternoon that she’d picked up the phone.
Tranter is the long-time president of Friends of the Parks, a watchdog organization that keeps a skeptical eye on the bureaucrats in charge of our green spaces, and I’d left a message with her earlier asking if she’d referee a claim by Cook County Board President John Stroger.
Stroger said that Forrest Claypool “destroyed the Chicago Park District” when he was park superintendent from 1993-98, and that he was “the worst person who ever ran the parks.”
I haven't been picking up much chatter about this commercial for the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty -- the one I found most memorable during yesterday's Super Bowl.
Click the play button to watch the embedded Google video. It's not funny, violent or bawdy; it simply shows a series of ordinary looking girls along with the on-screen words, "hates her freckles, thinks she's ugly; wishes she were blond; afraid she's fat."
I’ll see your true colors Shining through I see your true colors And that’s why I love you So don’t be afraid to let them show You're beautiful, Like a rainbow
The words on the screen say "Every girl deserves to feel good about herself."
Cynics have already pointed out the same thing they pointed out when Dove used zaftig women in their undergarments on billboards for an earlier phase of this campaign aimed at selling firming cream:
John Stroger's endorsement record in black and white
Column published today
[Black people] know phonies when they see them. ... whether you're black or white, they can spot a phony.....Cook County Board President John Stroger, Jan. 19
Let's be candid. Stroger, who is African American, is expecting and will need significant support from black voters in next month's Democratic primary election, where he is facing Forrest Claypool, a white county commissioner.
That likely explains his little racial drop-ins, such as the above quote from a wrangle with Claypool at a County Board meeting and his claim last year that African Americans were asking him if he was meeting opposition from Claypool and other reform-minded commissioners "because I'm black."
Back then Stroger said that black constituents--but not him, of course!--saw many parallels between his parliamentary battles and the "Council Wars" floor fights in the 1980s, when a bloc of white aldermen opposed the initiatives of Chicago's first black mayor, Harold Washington.
Yet let's not wring our hands about the injection of race into a campaign. Racial identity plays a big role in politics, as does religious and national identity. And white candidates have no doubt benefited far more than blacks from the tendency of voters to reflexively support members of their own group.
Let's instead look through the news archives at Stroger's repeated failure to do what he now wants black voters in Cook County to do: Support the African-American candidate.
Acting on a tip from a reader not long ago, I handed the cashier at Jewel my Dominick's Fresh Values card instead of my Jewel-Osco Preferred Customer card.
She protested lightly but then swiped the card, which gave me the relevant "loyalty" discounts on my groceries.
This struck me as odd, even ominous. Are the major grocery chains sharing information about my purchases, boring though they may be?
Mayor Richard Daley's old e-mail address -- MayorDaley@CityOfChicago.org -- no longer works.
No one expected Daley to personally field the blizzard of entreaties,
compliments, insults and offers that certainly poured in to that
address -- just one reason Daley has never announced a deal between the
City of Chicago and the wife of a deceased Nigerian dictator -- but it was
a useful, easy-to-remember way to get a message to City Hall.
Not long ago ( officials couldn't pinpoint the date) the city switched
to a system in which the "contact us" button at cityofchicago.org takes
readers to a feedback template allowing 2,000 character postings (this
item, for comparison purposes, is about 1,200 characters).
Staff then routes the messages to the appropriate departments.
"Obviously the mayor wasn't handling his own e-mail," said spokesman
John Camper. "So there was no point in pretending like he was."
Those who continue to send messages to the old address either don't get a response or find their e-mail returned to sender.
Meanwhile, those so inclined can still try to interest Gov. Rod
Blagojevich in online pharmaceuticals and male enhancement products by
writing to governor@illinois.gov.
As I listened to the pitiless dissection and assessment of
George Ryan's tax returns, I wondered uneasily what IRS forensic accountants might
find if they gave my finances the same CSI treatment given to Ryan's
finances...
(This column is published in today's newspaper)
The testimony Wednesday morning at the George Ryan trial made me squirm.
This column was published in today's paper. Post comments on this topic here.
A typical letter or voice mail in my inbox begins something like this:
"Because I'm a senior citizen and don't know how to use a computer, I'm contacting you the old-fashioned way ..."
Or
"Why are you always telling us to leave comments on the Web? A lot of us retirees aren't online, you know ..."
Such an explanation--or is it an excuse?--for not being wired for the
new millennium would be offensive if it came from a young person or if
it were matter-of-factly applied to an ethnic or gender group.
The first irony in the story about City Clerk James
Laski and his bodyguards is that for more than a decade as Laski
puttered away performing the ho-hum administrative duties of his
office, there was only one reason anyone might want to come up and jab
an angry finger into his chest:
Scarce public dollars were going so he could have a team of bodyguards.
Hey, big shot! Those police officers on your "security" detail could be
out protecting citizens and fighting crime instead of watching you
process dog licenses and peddle vehicle stickers! That's my money
you're spending there, pal. Why I oughtta ....
The second irony
is that now that Laski finds himself implicated in a corruption scandal
and has become a controversial, widely scorned figure who might really
be able to use a little insulation, the Chicago Police Department has
stripped him of those bodyguards.
"We decided we could use
those resources elsewhere, where they're needed," said police
spokeswoman Monique Bond when I called her Wednesday morning.
The Ed Schwartz I visited in a Des Plaines nursing
home over the weekend was not, thankfully, the Ed Schwartz I spoke to
before the winter holidays.
That Ed Schwartz was desperate and
depressed, joking in a flat voice that if someone put a pistol on his
nightstand he'd use it on himself. He was bedridden. He was unemployed.
He was broke. And he was out of hope.
"I don't see a way out," he said. "I can't live this way."
The onetime king of overnight radio in Chicago had hit bottom at age
59. He'd been off the air for 10 years, had lost his gig as a freelance
newspaper columnist last winter and was blindsided in September when he
was diagnosed with diabetes and severe kidney disease.
I'm committing a million dollars to the rebuilding of the Pilgrim Baptist Church....Gov. Rod Blagojevich Monday night to a congregation at St. John's Missionary Baptist Church on the South Side
What is this, medieval Europe?
Our government isn't supposed to build or rebuild churches. Not even
gorgeous, historically significant and culturally important churches
like Pilgrim Baptist, which burned down to its walls Friday.
Today's column was an outgrowth of this blog posting about interesting names in sports.
Some might say that Tinker to Evers to Chance is the most beautiful trio of names in Chicago sports history, but I've become partial to Ayanbadejo, Idonije and Ogunleye.
These names on the current Bears roster--linebacker Oladele Brendon Ayanbadejo, defensive end Israel Idonije and defensive end Adawale Ogunleye--fall musically on the ear and dance off the tongue.
The names delight not because they're unusual--heck, I'd never heard of an Orton before rookie quarterback Kyle came around, and his name does not delight--but, in part, because the weave of consonants and vowels is at once smooth and surprising; catchy, exotic, cool.
I say this in full awareness that commenting on anyone's last name can be risky, particularly if it's a less-than-familiar non-European last name.
You may have seen the stories last month about intriguing new allegations in a famous old Illinois death-penalty case:
Alstory Simon (pictured), who confessed on videotape to having killed two people
in 1982, a crime for which Anthony Porter was then sentenced to die, is
now claiming that he's innocent -- that his confession and subsequent
guilty plea were bogus.
It was intriguing because Porter's case
was the most galvanizing among the raft of wrongful convictions that
led to death-penalty reform in the state. Porter had won a reprieve
just 50 hours and 22 minutes from a scheduled lethal injection, and
then-Gov. George Ryan referred to him by name when announcing the
moratorium on executions that is still in place.
It was
intriguing also because Simon's claims of innocence directly attacked
the integrity of two men who have been famously active in investigating
and publicizing cases of wrongful conviction: Northwestern University
journalism professor David Protess and private investigator Paul
Ciolino, who cracked the Porter case. And they indirectly attacked Ryan
and all the lawyers, activists and journalists, including me, who
frequently cite the Porter case as an example of the death penalty's
fatal flaw.
What you didn't see in these stories, however, was also intriguing.
Today's column argues that, when police ask, health care workers should be required to assist in obtaining blood samples from suspected drunk drivers, even reluctant ones.
This column was published in today's newspaper-- supplemental material and helpful links at the bottom.
Though we averted another outbreak of sawhorses,
buckets and old dinette sets by the curb when the threatened fierce
snowstorm turned into a dank drizzle Wednesday, 'tis still the season
for "dibs" wars.
Are you for "dibs" or against "dibs"? Can those in favor of "dibs" live in peace with those opposed to "dibs"?
Good arguments can and will be had, but today I'm probing a more basic
question about this ugly, maddening habit of saving on-street parking
places with junk after a snowstorm:
Why "dibs"?
The
expression has been in common use in Chicago in recent years. Yet for
many years before that--more than 70, in fact--"dibs" has been the word
that our children have used to stake claims to objects, privileges or
opportunities they haven't earned.
Dibs on the window seat! Dibs on the last piece of pizza! Dibs on the Metro section!
Yet the whole idea of parking dibs, say its proponents, is that you
have earned your space--that your claim to a spot on a public street
derives from the effort you put in to shovel it out.
The best
analogy is not to grabby children, but to 19th Century American
homesteaders who were able to "prove up" their ownership of 160 acre
parcels of federal land by building a home on it and farming for five
years.
What's a "dib"?
In 1898, "Brewer's Dictionary of
Phrase and Fable" said that dibs (or dibbs) meant "money," and that the
word comes from diobolus, a unit of currency in ancient Greece equal to
a third of a drachma. A Newsweek article added that, in the early
1800s, "dib" was a slang term for "dollar."
Various dictionary
sources also note a connection between the word and a very old
jacks-like game called "dibstones" in which the knuckle-bones of sheep
were used as counters.
According to the Random House "Word of
the Day" feature, the game "dibstones" probably took its name from the
archaic verb "dib" meaning to "to pat or tap." But "dibs" as we know it
is more likely related to "dubs," a shortened form of "double" that's
used in marbles "to claim two or more marbles knocked out of the ring
by the same shot," Random House said.
The Online Etymology
Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary say that 1932 marks the
first recorded use of "dibs" to express an otherwise unearned "claim or
option on some object" and that it is an Americanism.
In
meaning, it's identical to "bagsy," (sometimes "bagsie" or "bags"), a
British slang term that appears in writing as far back as 1866. It
seems to be etymologically related to the way small-game hunters claim
and store their kill in bags, but no one is quite sure.
Evan
Morris wrote in his "Word Detective" column that researchers "surveyed
the playground rituals and protocols of more than 5,000 British
schoolchildren just after World War II" for the book "The Lore and
Language of Schoolchildren" and found:
"A child in Southern
England who spots the one cookie left on the plate might exclaim `Bags
it' or `Baggsy,' whereupon by the sacred code of children the prize is
hers. Her London counterpart might say `Squits.' Other words which seem
to work as well include `Barley,' `Bollars,' `Jigs' and, in Scotland,
`Chaps' or `Chucks.'"
Lexicographer Michael Quinion argued on
his World Wide Words Web site that there is "a howling great gap where
we might expect historical continuity" in the usage history of "dibs."
"We have no idea how a word for a game in Britain turned into an
American expression claiming priority," Quinion wrote. He passed along
a suggestion "that the word is a modified abbreviation of `division' or
`divide.'"
But of course "dibs" as practiced here in the winter
is not about dividing or sharing. Even if we renamed it "car-steading,"
it would still be about meeting your own needs and not concerning
yourself with anyone else.
Either way it seems fitting that the name of this activity comes straight from the selfish rituals of childhood. -------------------- Web-exclusive notes:
On Jan. 5, 1999, my colleague John Kass became
the first person I could find in my search of the local and national
news archives to use the term "dibs" in writing to refer to the
practice of saving of on-street parking places with household junk
after a snowstorm:
Cynics might say we're reverting to selfish ways. But actually, all
we're following is the ancient Chicagoland snow law prescribed by our
forefathers. Loosely translated, it means:
"I Got Dibs Over By Here."
"Happy Joyous Hannuka" -- Barbara Silverman and the Songs of Good Cheer Ensemble. Lyrics by Woody Guthrie. Tune by Loren Sklamberg of the Klezmatics. Recorded Friday at the Old Town School of Folk Music.
You should be able to click and play these mp3 files. If not, I can't help you.
Please, for the children, for the needy, order your copies of the Songs of Good Cheer souvenir, collectors' edition, heirloom, investment quality CD --recorded live in 2004 -- here today.
(Photo of Saturday's grand finale by Steve Kagan) --More photos in "continue reading" below
This column appeared in today's Chicago Tribune newspaper
Even more than 20 years after the embarrassing,
sickening truth must have become obvious to them, DuPage County
authorities still won't say it aloud:
Brian Dugan and Brian
Dugan alone abducted, raped and murdered 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico
of Naperville back in 1983, just as he has said.
State's Atty.
Joe Birkett repeatedly refused Tuesday afternoon to offer that simple
declaration during the news conference in Wheaton in which he announced
that a grand jury had indicted Dugan for the crime.
This column appeared in today's Chicago Tribune newspaper
Taking the long view back, a substitute ordinance to
restrict public smoking that will come before a Chicago City Council
committee this week deserves the adjective "compromise" that many use
to describe it.
The essence of its roughly 2,600 words is: "Restaurants, no. Bars, yes."
This column appeared in today's Chicago Tribune newspaper
If you don't like today's column, blame Abraham Lincoln.
If Lincoln had exercised better judgment in 1863 when he
fixed the date for Thanksgiving, we'd have celebrated last month, this would be
an ordinary week and I'd be writing happily on another topic.
Instead, Lincoln settled on late November, a dicey season for travel in the northern
states. And I'm writing furiously about
the need to move Thanksgiving into October.
This column appeared in today's Chicago Tribune newspaper
We live better than kings.
This Thanksgiving, as I type these words again, I can anticipate more clearly than ever the pugnacious response of the self-satisfied among the well-to-do class:
"We deserve to live better than kings!" they are saying even now. "We are virtuous and have worked hard! We will not be guilt-tripped by reminders of the material abundance in our lives!"
My last (for a while) Sunday fill-in column for Mary Schmich runs today:
The City of Chicago owes Anthony Porter a big apology for a stunning, graceless and infamous accusation lobbed at him by an attorney representing the city.
Read the column below. Read what Mary's been up to lately here.
This column appeared in today's Chicago Tribune newspaper
George Ryan's defense team is worried that jurors in
his ongoing federal corruption trial are going to ask themselves a
perfectly common-sense question:
How is it that this supposedly
aw-shucks former governor who lives modestly in Kankakee--"Not rich,"
they said in opening statements, "not fancy"--sits before them in the
middle of a beehive of exquisitely expensive lawyers?
This column appeared in today's Chicago Tribune newspaper
It's an inspiring, hopeful story, and it goes like this:
A grandmother on the South Side was watching the news on TV last week and thought she recognized her 18-year-old grandson, Tyree Howard, on an ATM surveillance tape. The announcer said the tape showed the unidentified men suspected in the carjacking and kidnapping of Loretta Wheeler of Kenwood.
The grandmother forced Howard to watch a later newscast with her, confronted him about his resemblance to one of the suspects and talked him into giving himself up to police.
This column appeared in today's Chicago Tribune newspaper
In a five-minute conversation Friday morning,
Andersonville cafe owner Dan McCauley put me on hold three times to
accept congratulatory calls from strangers around the country, then
signed off graciously because Geraldo Rivera's crew was waiting to tape
an interview.
"It's been overwhelming, ridiculous," McCauley,
44, said of the huge international response to an article about him in
Wednesday's New York Times. "I mean, all this over a piece of paper
held up by suction cups."
The paper is a sign on the door
reading "Children of all ages have to behave and use their indoor
voices when coming to A Taste of Heaven." It's at kids' eye level and
features four kiddie handprints.
This column appeared in today's Chicago Tribune newspaper
Alan Keyes' former campaign manager Bill Pascoe jokes that if he ever
writes a behind-the-scenes book about the wildest three months in state
political history he will use the title, "It Seemed Like a Good Idea at
the Time."
Putting down the watchdog -- Cohen nomination gets the shiv
This column appeared in today's Chicago Tribune newspaper
Today's column (below) revisits this recent post in which I scrutinized the roll-call vote against veteran consumer activist Martin Cohen to head the Illinois Commerce Commission.
This column appeared in today's Chicago Tribune newspaper
To: Mary Schmich From: Eric Zorn
You
realize, don't you, Mary, that you can be "on assignment" all you want
this fall, but that in a little more than a month you're going to have
to be "on stage" with me?
Today's column (below) takes an overview of the first five weeks of the George Ryan corruption trial and concludes that, all the fuss and drama aside, Scott Fawell was probably just about the witness that the feds expected he'd be.
Pay heed to rules or face the wrath of Halloween Scrooge
At the risk of being remembered as the Ebenezer Scrooge of Halloween--no, scratch that. In the profound hope of being remembered as the Ebenezer Scrooge of Halloween, allow me to present a re-run of my timely reminders and guidelines in advance of Monday's festivities:
Column: Ehlo's dream and other World Series commercials
Today's column discusses the TV commercials aired during the World Series, particularly the Gatorade spot that shows Michael Jordan missing "The Shot," Dwight Clark missing "The Catch" and Jorge Posada missing "The Tag," though I'm not sure Posada's 2001 put-out ever received the capital letter treatment.
Before we get to that, however, here are a few takes on other spots seen Sunday night during the series telecast:
COLUMN: Series serious for some, just fun for others
The World Series in Chicago!
This should be fun.
Agonizing at times, sure. Maybe disappointing in the end.
But fun. Memorable. Entertaining. Worth the investment of time, heart and cash.
And I say this as an unreconstructed Cubs fan who has been rooting
against the Sox all season--nonchalantly at first, but with greater and
greater vigor as the team has gotten closer and closer to claiming
local bragging rights for what might just be the rest of my life.
As a subtle form of government coercion, federal
prisoner Scott Fawell's hellish 12-week odyssey was neither subtle nor,
he said, particularly coercive.
Today's column (posted below in "continue reading") revisits the smoking-ban issue and argues that the decisive argument in favor is the argument that says the most important principle at stake is a principle even more fundamental to our way of life than entrepreneurial freedom or the freedom to dine enveloped in a noxious fog -- it's the the principle that no worker should be forced to choose between a good job and safe working environment.
COLUMN: Fling with Sox? True Cub fans ought to abstain
Mary Schmich's still on assignment so I'm still pinch-hitting on Sundays. Blog readers will enjoy or least recognize this re-tooling of an entry from last week:
It's almost closing time on the baseball season, Cub fans.
You're all alone and feeling blue. And just over there looking awfully
fine and totally approachable, is the attractive stranger, the last
chance for a little fun, the Chicago White Sox.
Oh, it looks
exciting, doesn't it? Slip off your Cubs hat and stuff it in your
pocket. Amble on over. "Hey, baby, mind if I root you on?"
Scores of advocates packed the Chicago City Council chambers
Wednesday morning expecting to
see the dawn of a new era in the city.
Instead they saw the flickering of the
old era's dying light.
In the end, those who still cling to
the idea that business owners and other employers have a right to allow
smokers to foul the indoor air in places
open to the public celebrated a three-week reprieve from the council's
Health Committee, which most observers thought was prepared to pass comprehensive smoking restrictions.
Column: Ryan just a link to Willis deaths, not whole story
Lingering questions and accusations about the relationship between corruption charges against former Gov. George Ryan and the Willis family tragedy inspires me to reprint this January 8, 2004 column:
Ricardo Guzman was a bad driver with a bad license who was driving a bad truck north on Interstate Highway 94 near Milwaukee on Nov. 8, 1994.
What happened was horrific: A mudflap-taillight assembly fell off, punctured the gas tank of a trailing mini-van and the resulting inferno killed six children of Scott and Janet Willis of Chicago.
Federal investigators allege Guzman had paid a bribe to obtain his commercial driver's license in 1992 instead of taking the required tests.
And though the Willis tragedy is not part of the 92-page federal indictment against former Illinois Governor and Secretary of State George Ryan in the Operation Safe Road probe, the fact that Guzman was illicitly driving a truck on that fateful day surfaces in virtually every conversation about the systematic corruption that infected the secretary of state's office under Ryan.
This question is seldom asked, and so I'll ask it: What if Guzman, a native of Mexico with a poor command of English, according to many accounts, had instead been a good driver with a good license?
Column: Fawell `incentive' to testify casts doubt on feds' case
"You guys have my head in a vise, basically." ---Scott Fawell
Right metaphor, wrong head.
When Fawell, the star government witness in the ongoing corruption
trial of former Gov. George Ryan, took the stand last week, he
explained upfront why he was there--why, despite his expressed
continuing fondness for Ryan and his dislike for prosecutors, he was
about to spend several weeks on the stand telling unflattering tales
about his former boss and mentor.
The "my head in a vise" line
made virtually every news story from the trial's opening day of
testimony. But in fact, the noggin squeezed inside the feds' clamps
belongs not to Fawell, but to his fiance, Alexandra "Andrea" Coutretsis.
Column: Fawell on stand doesn't even try to appear sorry
Published September 30, 2005
How would a man act if he were making the awful choice to lie under oath and betray a friend in order to help someone he loves?
Pained, I would guess. Mortified. Abashed. Guilty. Conscience-stricken. Perhaps merely subdued and reluctant.
But not smirky and slouchy and too cool for school. Not proud and sassy.
Not, in other words, like Scott Fawell acted on the witness stand
during the first day of testimony Thursday at the corruption trial of
former Gov. George Ryan and businessman Larry Warner.
Thoughts, observations and quotations from the trial along with today's column:
I arrived at the Dirksen Federal Building a little after 8 a.m. Wednesday morning for opening statements that were supposed to begin around 10 a.m., and was 30th in line outside the 21st floor courtroom.
Column: Another visit to Chicago's retail graveyard
Responses to last Thursday's column continued to come in during the weekend and inspired me to publish the names of still more "gone but not forgotten" area businesses for today's column.
Even though the comment thread is huge, I'm keeping it all in one place, here.
Filling in for Mary Schmich on Sunday (she is "on assignment" and no, I don't know the assignment) I am riffing on John Scalzi's "Being Poor" list/essay (his further reflections are here) and exploring the idea of being privileged.
Being privileged is never sweating the insurance co-pay.
Being privileged is having health insurance in the first place.
Being privileged is worrying about the time it will take rather than the money it will cost to fix your broken refrigerator.
In this context, privilege is the comfort, security and perks that come with having at least a small financial cushion. Privilege, some of it earned, some of it we're born with, lubricates our lives in ways many of us are not aware of, day to day:
Being privileged is cosmetic orthodontia
Being privileged is not carrying a balance on your Visa.
Being privileged is drinking gourmet coffee, bottled water and imported beer.
Being privileged is a $30 haircut.
Being privileged is having memberships, subscriptions, season tickets and parking spots.
Being privileged is not knowing whether it's this Friday or next Friday that's payday.
Being privileged is having a college savings account.
Being privileged is having the money to join a warehouse shopping club and the space to store all those bulk items.
Being privileged is TiVoing your favorite shows.
Being privileged is cashing in your frequent flyer miles.
Being privileged is hiring someone to clean your toilets.
Being privileged is not waiting for the paperback to come out.
Being privileged is having three or more phone numbers to your name.
Being privileged is when you don't play the lottery in part because you know that in many ways you've already won the lottery.
The list is impressionistic and personal. Like Scalzi's list, it draws a subjective and, in some places debatable line between necessities and luxuries.
And I'd like your help adding to it in the comments section.
Being privileged is having internet access at home so you can easily participate in online discussions about what it means to be privileged.
Full column as published is posted below in "continue reading."
Column: Field's not first, or last, business to clock out
I hadn't planned to write a column on gone-but-not-forgotten businesses in Chicago, but reader response to my blog post on Tuesday listing a few names was huge. At this writing there are well over 400 comments appended to that entry, most of them listing defunct stores, restaurants, banks, gas stations and other establishments that belong in what I called the retail graveyard.
I make no representation that I'm the first one to use the expression, by the way.
It was a very easy column to write, obviously. I simply had to pick through the hundreds of submissions from readers and intersperse them with some skeletal commentary.
But it was an exceedingly difficult column to fact check.
It's good enough for blog work to post a list of names and suggestions, then let the organic, reader community process edit and correct that list. For print, however, it's harder to undeclare someone or in this case something dead, so I spent much of Wednesday calling 411, leafing through the White Pages and the Yellow Pages, checking with the news archives and searching online.
Alas, most businesses don't get birth annoucements or death notices in the papers, though now that I've done this columns I've come to think that they should; that the financial pages ought to have a standing feature in which businesses or business names that have died are properly memorialized and eulogized.
I also think that a Chicago Retail Graveyard site would be a popular destination on the Web, particularly if it featured photos and dates.
If my experience is any guide, it won't be simple to do such a site right.
Are Ponderosa Steak Houses gone gone gone? I thought so until late in the day when directory assistance pointed me to one near Waukegan. That one had to come out of the column.
Contempo Casuals? The Web and the phone book suggested one or two still exist, reader comments notwithstanding, so I took that out, too, even though no one answered when I called the numbers.
In my search yesterday I found no evidence that Rolling Stone Records was still around, but this morning came the comment (and the link) from a reader that Rolling Stones Records is at 7300 W. Irving Park Rd. in Norridge. I'll need to check the provenance of the name (how did it ever survive the copyright lawyers?) but right now that looks like an error.
Update--According to the Norridge RSR store, only the downtown RSR store at 175 W. Washington St. ran afoul of lawyers and changed names many years ago.
Similar lineage questions remain for Naked Furniture, which some say is the name by which Unfinished Furniture of Downers Grove is known, and for Buffalo Restaurant & Ice Cream in Buffalo Grove, which one may or may not consider the direct descendant of the beloved ice cream shop that used to be in my Northwest Side neighborhood.
Update --According to the furniture store in question in Downers Grove, the original chain of Naked Furniture stores went out of business and this Downers Grove location simply retained the name and does not operate under the name "Unfinished Furniture of Downers Grove".
Update -- In July, 1999, The Tribune's Phil Vettel reported that "The original Buffalo Ice Cream Parlor at Irving Park and Pulaski Roads (it closed in 1978) was
purchased by a former employee and reopened eight years ago (1991) in the
northwest suburbs..." In 2003 he added, "The old-fashioned decor is
long gone (the place looks very much like the suburban family
restaurant it is) and Buffalo no longer makes its own ice cream.
Amending this column (posted below in "continue reading") may turn out to be a column in and of itself. Yessss!
Meanwhile, I'm simply going to let the comments thread continue to grow. To participate, go here.
Rather than analyze, dispute or wring my hands over
the results of recent polls showing a huge gap between the way whites
and blacks view the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I decided to do
something I don't do enough of: Simply listen.
Monday through
Wednesday I tuned to all four hours of "The Cliff Kelley Show," the
morning-drive program on WVON-AM 1450, a talk station with a
predominantly liberal, African-American audience.
Admittedly,
Kelley's callers and guests skew toward the 76 percent of
African-Americans (and 24 percent of whites) who told ABC
News/Washington Post pollsters they believe that rescuers on the Gulf
Coast would have responded more quickly had more of the hurricane
victims been wealthy and white. And they skew toward the 68 percent of
African-Americans (and 28 percent of whites) who said in the same poll
that they don't think President Bush cares about black people.
But what else are they saying? Here, without comment, rebuttal or
clarification are quotes from the show--I call them my Cliff notes:
Tuesday's column (posted below in "continue reading") leaves the subject of Hurricane Katrina entirely (almost) to visit the little imbroglio at the Daley Center over text messaging.
The fuss was prompted by an unsigned, scrawled letter to Judge Randye Kogan (see photo/names obscured by me) alleging that two jurors in the civil trial related to the Ryan Harris murder investigation were text messaging each other during breaks with such remarks as "He's guilty" or "Explain what the the lawyer meant by..."
The angle that interests me most is the broader issue of whether we should allow jurors to discuss cases amongst themselves as they are hearing evidence.
E-mail other relevant links to ericzorn at gmail.com.
Here
is a click poll that asks those of you who have served on juries which, if
any, of the common admonitions you violated during the trial (as of 6:30 a.m., 22 percent of 100 former jurors said they'd discussed cases during trial with family members, 12 percent with friends or fellow jurors and 10 percent watched coverage of the trial in the news media).
Column: Bush may scorn blame game, but he has to play
Today's column, posted below in "continue reading," gives the thumbs up to the "blame game" and revisits the issue of the word "refugee."
Though I'm abandoning the word, my colleagues Don Wycliff ("Refugees, evacuees?") and John Kass ("Words won't change reality") are leaping to its defense today. I hope we don't come to blows in the lunchroom.
Lots of e-mail today already, which I'm directing into the comments areas. "Blame game" comments should go here. "Refugee" comments should go here.
(NOTE: Comments are not posted immediately because they go through a screening process to remove foul language, libelous assertions and other violations of the rules of the blame game.)
Today's column (below in "continue reading") reprises several blog entries from Monday (hey, it was a holiday)-- notably the item on guns and the item on "refugee" vs. "evacuee."
I'm directing comments on guns to this thread, and comments on "refugee" to this thread.
NOTE: Comments are not posted immediately because, oh you know why.
Column: Katrina shows we're not ready for catastrophe
Mary Schmich was on her way down to Louisiana so I wrote the Sunday Metro column today.
The thesis, one I'm reading a lot elsewhere today as well, that if disaster relief is such a botch when the bureaucrats have many days' warning to address a crisis they've seen coming and planned for for years, what nightmares await us after a genuine surprise attack?
Today's column argues that, while we were obligated to spend billions to protect New Orleans from the encroaching ravages of the ocean, the devastating flooding in that town has cancelled that obligation.
It's folly to invest in pumping out, cleaning up, rebuilding and refortifying a city that's long been slowly sinking into the delta ooze and will surely be inundated again.
As always, I'm interested in your views. Leave your comments below and take the click poll that asks: What should be done with New Orleans?
Fix the levees, pump the city out, clean it up and build it back right where it was.
Allow it to remain the swampland that nature intends and spend all that money to re-build elsewhere.
(NOTE: Comments are not posted immediately because they must go through a screening process to remove foul language, libelous assertions and anatomically impossible suggestions.)
Today's column (below) further explores my opposition to the efforts to ban marijuana-flavored candy. On the off chance that someone disagrees with my exquisite and impermeable logic, I'll open up the comments and start another fun click-poll.
The question: Should it be legal for stores to sell marijuana-flavored candy?
(NOTE: Comments are not posted immediately because they must go through a screening process to remove foul language, potentially libelous assertions and things potentially harmful to children.)
Column: What's a fair tip for cleaning a hotel room?
Today's column re-opens the can o' worms about gratuities that I first cracked the seal on here by floating the notion that we ought to tip grocery store baggers, continued here with publication and discussion of the famous tipping discussion in "Reservoir Dogs," then here with my question about what kind of tip to leave behind in a skanky hotel room and a buffet table, and here with a selection of reader letters on all that.
Now, the online survey: Take my quick-click online poll here and then, if you're so inclined, in the comments section below, tell me what you think about hotel room tips, the new 17 percent restaurant-tip standard and tipping in general.
(NOTE--A manual review process delays the posting of all comments. It's nothing personal)
Today's column -- see below -- updates and fleshes out yesterday's blog posting. And if you're counting (I am!), the Sox Toxic Number is now just 48...
Add your comments to the previous thread here , but try not to foam triumphantly that of course I write from a pro-Cub perspective, I'm a Tribune company employee.
There is no litmus test around the newsroom about baseball loyalty -- witness the prominence of John Kass -- and believe me, the business-oriented people in the Tower are hoping the Sox do very well this year if for no other reason than that it would -- here comes that dreaded expression--sell papers.
Oh, and don't wail that "Mudville" is some kind of vile slur. It's a reference to the classic, baseball-failure poem "Casey at the Bat," in which the second to last line says "there is no joy in Mudville."
Other than that, fire away!
(NOTE: comments are not posted immediately
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Column: 2 letters sum up city's weak case in Harris suit
Published August 18, 2005
"OK."
That one expression, uttered late Wednesday morning in court by a lawyer for the city, neatly encapsulated the desperate noxiousness of Chicago's defense of the Ryan Harris murder investigation.
Column: Why didn't he at least shave the moustache?
"It's either ego or stupidity" that prompts many fugitives to
maintain their old likeness while on the lam ... Avery Mann, a
spokesman for "America's Most Wanted." Here is the entire column, published August 16, 2005:
COLUMN: BIRKETT'S ZEAL IS QUESTIONABLE IN NICARICO CASE
Published July 26, 2005
It's time for DuPage County to declare victory in the Nicarico case and end this 22-year nightmare to an end.
Indications are that, any day, we'll see a grand jury indictment of
Brian Dugan, 48, in the 1983 abduction, rape and murder of 10-year-old
Jeanine Nicarico of Naperville -- a crime to which he has offered to
plead guilty in exchange for a life term withput parole.
He's
already serving two such sentences at Pontiac Correctional Center for
other sex killings, so his offer isn't particularly impressive.
Still, States Attorney Joseph Birkett should take it and announce that justice has, at last, been done.
Instead,
he's determined to lead a costly and possibly futile effort to take
Dugan's life before the Grim Reaper beats him to it.
Following
the upcoming indictment will almost certainly come many, many months of
legal ground pawing as attorneys for Dugan file motions and
continuances while making their way through the estimated 175,000 pages
of documentary evidence that it's already taken DuPage officials nearly
three years to process.
After that will come a trial and, assuming Dugan is convicted and sentenced to death, numerous appeals.
The entire process is luxuriously expensive. A 1993 Duke University
study found it costs $2.2 million more to execute a prisoner than it
does to lock him up for life; a 1992 calculation by the Dallas Morning
News found that Texas spends an average of $2.3 million per execution,
three times the cost of keeping a prisoner in maximum security for 40
years.
And a 2003 Kansas Dept. of Corrections audit found that median death
penalty cases cost $1.26 million compared to $740,000 for non-death
penalty cases.
DuPage County has already spent untold millions since 1983
investigating, re-investigating, trying and re-trying and re-re-trying
other figures in this case, which has already seen six criminal trials
and two civil actions.
Since November, 2002, when Birkett's office announced that modern
DNA testing had established with "scientific certainty" that Dugan
raped Jeanine, the county has devoted considerable (though still
somewhat mysterious) resources to the preparation of an air-tight case
against Dugan.
I won't argue that Dugan deserves any mercy. The indictment will
allege that he discovered Jeanine home sick from school while looking
to commit a weekday burglary, kicked in the door, grabbed her and took
her to a remote location where he sexually assaulted and bludgeoned
her. No corner of hell will be hot enough for him.
But Birkett is throwing good money after bad.
Before the January, 2000, moratorium on the death penalty in
Illinois, the shortest time between conviction and execution for the 10
convicts who pursued all their appeals was 13 years; the average was 15
years.
So even if a future governor lifts the moratorium, not a sure thing,
Dugan will likely be in his mid- to late-60s before he faces a trip to
the gallows. If he's still alive.
National Center for Health Statistics tables show that average life
expectancy for white males born in the mid-50s is roughly 68; life
expectancy for prisoners is 64 according to a ballpark estimate by the
Texas Criminal Justice Policy Council.
For no practical purpose other than the chance to shave a few
pathetic years off an evil man's life, Birkett is spending an untold
fortune in taxpayer dollars and preparing for a sensational trial
that's bound to rip the scab off a civic wound that a plea bargain
would begin to heal.
This objection is not about the death penalty. It's about an excess
of symbolism and a lack of substance. It's about directing scarce
resources where they can make a difference instead of where they can
make a point.
I pressed him on this issue Monday during a meeting he had with
Tribune editors, reporters and members of the editorial board. He asked
that all his remarks during that meeting be kept secret until Dugan is
indicted, and of course I'll respect that request.
But in the hallway afterwards I asked him for an on-the-record
response to the suggestion that this zeal for capital justice is
wasteful and futile.
"I respectfully disagree with you," was all he would say. "We're pursuing this case for the right reasons."
Fair enough. Respectful disagreements all around.
---- Illinois Dept. of Corrections photo of Brian Dugan
COLUMN: PUT YOUR FEET UP, THERE'S MORE TO FLIP-FLOP STORY
Published July 21, 2005
From two pebbles of pique falling on July 13 came an international
avalanche of fulminations, pontifications and observations that became
known as the Flip-Flop Flap.
That day, Tribune RedEye edition reporter Kathryn Masterson was
looking through the main paper for a follow-up story on temporarily
missing Cub fan and civic mascot Ronnie "Woo Woo" Wickers, when she
saw, on page 8 of Sports, a photo of Northwestern University's
championship women's lacrosse team posing in the White House the
previous day with President Bush.
"I noticed their shoes right away," Masterson said, noting that some
women were wearing flip-flop sandals. "And it seemed really
inappropriate to me."
She shared her complaint with several colleagues and argued for further coverage of the faux pas.
But it stopped there, and Masterson's meditation might have ended up
as a one-line snark-attack in RedEye if Tribune Editor Ann Marie
Lipinski hadn't lingered in dismay over that same photo that same
evening as she sat in bed catching up on her reading.
"I stared at the shoes and thought, `Hmm, that's an interesting
choice,'" she said. "I ripped the picture out, set it aside and
wondered if there was a story there, or if I just needed to get some
sleep."
In the office the next morning, she showed the photo to one of her
deputies and simply asked the woman if she noticed anything unusual.
The editor failed the flip-flop Rorschach, "and I thought, OK, I guess
I'm the only one," Lipinski said.
But, coincidentally, Lipinski had a meeting shortly thereafter with
RedEye columnist Maegan Carberry, one of those who'd gotten an earful
from Masterson the previous day.
At the close of that meeting, Lipinski tried again, handing the
photo to Carberry and asking, without prompting, what she thought.
"I said `Oh, the flip-flops,'" said Carberry. "She said, `Exactly!'"
Emboldened, Lipinski took the picture into an editors' meeting and,
again, showed it around. Some of the others present--women, let's be
honest; most men are so footwear-oblivious they wouldn't have noticed
if the lacrosse team had been wearing clown shoes--got flip-flop
flutters, so the order went out: Blanket coverage! Page One! And Let's
Have Some Fun!
Carberry sought out etiquette mavens and got citizen reaction on the street.
North suburban reporter Jodi Cohen tracked down as many of the
lacrosse players and their family members as she could, and scored big
when she found that consternation had already arisen in those ranks.
Washington correspondent Michael Kilian worked the historical and
White House angles, while Springfield correspondent Christi Parsons
queried Illinois lawmakers on their views on What It All Means.
A lot of news, both serious and silly, starts this way--small
observations or nagging questions that someone can't shake and finally
pursues, often after crashing through the barrier of doubt that anyone
else cares.
What's unusual here is that so many people did care. The Tribune's
front-page story Friday morning shot across the country on several news
wires and quickly became Lifestyle Topic A on talk programs, blogs,
commentary pages and, I'm guessing, at dinner tables.
The breach of formality mixed questions of fashion and manners, and
added a bracing splash of "where in God's name are the youth of today
taking this world?"
By Monday morning, NBC-TV's "Today" show was billing it as "The
Great Flip-Flop Flap of 2005" and host Matt Lauer was interviewing two
team members, their parents, their coach and a "shoe expert" in the
program's New York studios.
CBS-TV's "Early Show" did a segment on the controversy the next
morning, the day former President Ronald Reagan's daughter Patti Davis
published an online Newsweek essay saying "the story seems to be
everywhere and I, for one, cannot sit idly by and watch these young
women be chided for their attire."
By midweek, the tempest in a Teva was on news Web sites worldwide,
turbocharged by the announcement that the women plan to auction off the
flip-flops to benefit a 10-year-old girl with a brain tumor.
Were there more consequential stories that day? Was the Flip-Flop
Flap a frivolous fuss during fundamentally serious times? Sure. But we
need those stories, and it's always a sad day when we can't stop to
enjoy them.
COLUMN: BLAGOJEVICH'S STEM-CELL MOVE HAS FAMILIAR RING
Published July 19, 2005
It was an affront to the deliberate majesty of legislative democracy! Our chief executive bypassed reluctant lawmakers and earmarked taxpayers' money to advance his agenda on a controversial moral issue!
Yet I didn't hear a lot of concern voiced over process back in 2002 when President Bush, rebuffed by Congress in his effort to funnel money to faith-based social service organizations, signed an executive order permitting such groups to compete with secular charities for federal grants.
And if commentators and editorialists tut-tutted in March when the president proudly announced that faith-based operations had snagged $2 billion in the 2004 budget year despite the "big mountain called bureaucracy," it must have been softly.
But response has been loud and indignant over Gov. Rod Blagojevich's stem-cell sleight-of-hand last week:
COLUMN: NO REVERENCE REQUIRED TO BE A REAL REVEREND
Published July 14, 2005
In case you're planning a really wild, memorable wedding that includes exorcisms or animal sacrifice, I'm telling you right now, don't hire me or John Callaway to officiate.
The church in which we were recently ordained forbids us from presiding over such rites.
COLUMN: DROUGHT MAKES LAWN LAZINESS A POINT OF PRIDE
I'm actually grateful that a mild overnight shower took the timely edge off this column, which arrived on moist porches this morning.
July 12, 2005
The drought of '05 has done what many once thought impossible: It's made me proud of my lawn.
It's a scrubby little thing, year in and year out. Patchy. Rough around the edges. Weedy. Living proof of my ambivalence about conformity, my preference for nature over artifice, my view that a yard is to be played on, not looked at, and, yes, my laziness. (left, our lawn, actual color)
The lush, green expanse of grass surrounding a home has never been my thing. And it's not just the work and the chemicals involved. It's the traditional, keep-off! fussiness of those who cultivate such expanses. It's the monochromatic monotony of it all, the lack of character and imagination. It's the disconnect from the utilitarian roots--so to speak--of vegetation that covers the ground.
To me, the perfect lawn is the polyester of domestic landscaping.
Yet I realize that this view is nearly un-American. And every year for the last 15 that I have been master of my own lawn, I've had the decency to feel a little embarrassed about how, upon close inspections, ours is among the worst on our Northwest Side block.
As much as I'm a believer in the naturally frowsy lawn, I'm also a believer in community standards and the polite adherence to local customs. We want our property to conform, by and large, because it's the neighborly thing, and because we expect the same from those who live around us (right, our neighbor's lawn).
Then came the drought--this damnably persistent and by some measures record-setting dry spell that has seen less than an inch of rain fall on this area in the last seven weeks. Swaths of our unwatered lawn went brown--not dead, just dormant, the experts assure me--and crispy.
On July 3, Gov. Rod Blagojevich issued a statement telling state agencies to be conservative when watering lawns and washing state vehicles.
COLUMN: DROUGHT DRIES UP USUAL DISTAIN FOR PRECIPITATION
Published July 7, 2005
We were on our way to an Independence Day cookout at a neighbor's house when it began to drizzle.
"Great!" I said at once--the first time I can remember ever responding enthusiastically to rain.
Showers were likely to drive the kids inside to grow mushrooms on themselves playing Nintendo in the basement and stood to wash out the illegal fireworks extravaganza later at our local city park. But those seemed like petty concerns compared with the promise of relief from the severe drought now parching our region.
COLUMN: PICKLE, ROAD AND LEASE QUESTIONS? EXTERMINATE `EM
Published July 5, 2005
Are pickle producers paralyzed by prohibitions? What's the name of that downtown mystery street that appears on no maps? Why do most apartment leases here begin on either May 1 or October 1? And why does Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed put the abbreviation "'em" in so many of her little headlines?
These are among the scores of queries readers have submitted recently to The Exterminator, my alter ego who occasionally surfaces to dispatch the little questions that have been bugging you but that you're too busy, too shy or too embarrassed to ask.
About "Change of Subject."
"Change of Subject" by Chicago Tribune metro columnist Eric Zorn contains observations, reports, tips, referrals and tirades, though not necessarily in that order. Links will tend to expire, so seize the day. For an archive of Zorn's latest Tribune columns click here. An explanation of the title of this blog is here. For other archival links incluidng an extended bio, speeches and supplementary information about all sorts of stuff, click here. If you have other questions, suggestions or comments, send e-mail to ericzorn at gmail.com.